Month: March 2010

Blogging in bed.

Just woke up from a long slumber. The boyfriend is still snoring, albeit very gently next to me. We are in Cameron Highlands for the 3rd anniversary of the photography forum that he founded.

When he 1st started, he asked me to help him design a logo for the forum. We didn’t have any budget for a real designer then so I thought I’d help out the man. It is now the 2nd largest photography forum in Malaysia and perhaps Asia too (I’m not too sure) with 20,000+ members.

Now, everytime I see the forum’s sticker at the back of someone’s car I’m both pleased and somewhat embarrassed at the same time, hehe.

I’m extremely proud of my babyboo. Am also very happy that he’s got so many members and personal friends on his forum who tirelessly contribute time, money and ideas to bring Shutter Asia to where it is now. As the he said to me before, “I only provided a platform. It’s the members that make it successful”.

I agree whole-heartedly, but I also think it’s because he’s a forum owner who doesn’t stifle creativity or freedom of expression. Most of all, he did not start it for money and eventhough he could profit easily from it now he’s not the least interested in doing so.

The chinese in me is dying to pull his ears off for not cashing in but I have to admit, he’s really doing a right thing. We need more knowledge sharing channels without commercialisation constantly threatening their integrity.

Well, my fingers are already aching from typing on this little device while lying flat in bed. He’s still fast asleep and my belly is starting to rumble for food. I’m going to be a brat in a minute, cutting short his sleep to make him take me out for breakfast. He’s unlikely to read this post till we’re home much later today so I want to say when you’re reading this: I love you and I’m proud that you’re my man.

Naked stick people under the table.

When I was very young, I used to lie on the floor under my parents’ coffee table and drew naked people all over the underside of the table. I totally forgot about it until a couple of years later, my Dad flipped the table over to repaint it and there, my childhood curiosity in various colours for all to see. I think I registered embarrassment for the first time. And then anger for not knowing how to react. Even as a child then, I knew I was busted and I felt so angry with myself for not drawing over the naked people and for totally forgetting about it. Well, thanks goodness for younger brother to take the blame.

I find it incredibly hard to control my anger recently. I freak out at the slightest thing. Yesterday, my printer had a paper jam so I tried to pull it out but while doing that, a USB cable which was somehow in the paper slot got pulled through the roller as well and stuck. After 1/2 hour of shoving and pulling we finally got the damn cable out and also the jammed paper, but eversince my printer has been saying “Paper jam. Please remove paper and press OK”. It doesn’t work.

I slapped the damn thing around and punched it. It felt good. Then I contemplated throwing it on the floor and jumped on it till it breaks and cut my feet so I can feel my blood oozing and printing it with blood (take that bitch, I can print better than you stupid Canon MX318). But I refrained, instead I channelled my anger into being a complete douchebag to my bf. I don’t know why can’t I just be cool and send the printer for fixing?

The other day, my bf set a new record on Word Mole game on my BB. There was a feature where he could send in his login/password to submit his score to the general board. Somehow, I was convinced that he had set my Word Mole game exclusively to his nickname and it pissed me off so bad I couldn’t talk to him. In bed, I tried for hours trying to beat his score and when I couldn’t I angrily deleted his score of the game. Then I slept. But when I woke up, I was still angry but another part of me had kind of sobered up, questioning my actions and thoughts. So it’s really like the devil & angel on each shoulder scenario. One was telling me to slap my bf while he’s still asleep and the other was like, “WTF Bitch, chill the eff out!”.

I guess there’s really no point to my post, except that I really want to say; people don’t want to piss me off. And I think the source of my anger was from being found out drawing porn underneath the coffee-table.

Best Twitter Applications for BlackBerry – UberTwitter vs OpenBeak vs TweetGenius vs Seesmic

Been searching high and low for the right Twitter application for my Blackberry. I have sort of found THE ONE but first let me talk about what kind of Twitter application I was looking for:

1. I must be able to view the timeline with ease, as in who tweeted what without my own tweet being buried with all the tweets.

2. The application must be able to send pictures to the TwitPic host. I’ve been using twitpic from the beginning so I would like all my pictures to stay on one website. Also, I’ve got a plugin on my blog that shows my latest twitpic with the twitter description (check my sidebar), a feature I have yet to find with other picture hosts.

3. The application must not have ads. I think I was spoilt from using Gravity in my previous phone, the Nokia N97 which I really loved. So I can’t stand banner ads on my twitter timeline :(

When I just got my crackberry, UberTwitter was the top recommendation because it’s free and widely used. In fact I think 8 out of 10 people on BlackBerry use UberTwitter to tweet. It is a good application, very complete…almost like Tweetdeck, perhaps even better. It’s got auto complete for friends’ Twitter names (a HUGE plus) but unfortunately I really couldn’t stand the interface, the inability to post to TwitPic and the banner ads.

UberTwitter – Cannot stand the banner ads :(

For some reason, I really can’t get used to the Ubertwitter interface, either on list or bubble mode. And always take me a while to recognise the newer tweets from read tweets. But my major beef with Ubertwitter is its inability to post to Twitpic. It uses Tweetphoto, which is fine really but I’ve been twitpicking for a long time and I don’t really want any interruption to my picture stream.

Due to these reasons, I began to experiment with other twitter applications. I heard of Twitterberry which is now called OpenBeak. It seemed promising at first but the problems began to emerge almost immediately after I started using it.

First of all, who on earth that uses Twitter cares about the Public Timeline? I don’t know about you, but I only care about my own timeline. If I want to check for trends, I’d do a hashtag search. So I really don’t understand why OpenBeak made Public Timeline as the first thing on their scroll menu instead of Send Tweet or My Timeline. In fact, it took me a while to click onto my own timeline because it’s called something entirely random that I can’t even remember what now.

OpenBeak – Should be called OpenBleak instead.

And the worst thing, when you launch the application, the 1st page you see is the field to send a tweet. That’s not cool, cause I want to read what others are saying 1st before I contribute my thoughts to the Twittersphere.

After the disappointment, I decided to google around for more Blackberry twitter applications and found TweetGenius. Seemed to have a lot of good reviews too. So downloaded it and was immediately very, very impressed. The timeline is very nicely done with your own tweets standing out from your friends’. And it’s very easy to navigate to see tweets mentioning you and your direct messages.

It also uploads to Twitpic which is a major plus, but as I found out later, it uploads the picture to Twitpic website FIRST, and then only you can share it on Twitter with the description. This has now become now not so cool because I want my Twitter description to also appear alongside my pictures on Twitpic website so that they could appear on my rss picture feed on my blog.

Besides, the TweetGenius application is really huge, more than 1mb and I feel that for such lax features I don’t need to slow down my device with such a memory zapping application. It does look beautiful, I’ll give you that.

TweetGenius – Impressive interface, all fluff and no stuff.

Yes, I’m getting very frustrated by now.

So I searched around again and found Seesmic. Funnily, I haven’t really come across much reviews whether positive or negative about Seesmic, but the features stated on its own website seem to show promises. So, I gritted my teeth, deleted TweetGenius and downloaded Seesmic. Only 220KB, I was relieved.

When I started it, I was surprised at how nice the interface is. Not as cool as TweetGenius for sure, but much better than UberTwitter and OpenBeak. The menu is straightforward and you can Reply All. And it also allows sharing pictures through TwitPic, TweetPhoto & yFrog.

At last, the photosharing feature on Seesmic is exactly like TweetGenius, where the picture you choose would be uploaded first to the TwitPic website and then a link is only created for you to share it on Twitter :(

Seesmic – Nice, simple interface and very light on your Blackberry.

Guess all my pre-requisites considered, I’m settling with Seesmic for now because it’s light, got a nice, simple interface, can Reply All and does not have banner ads. I’m not really concerned with not being able to auto complete Twitter names and I’m willing to forgo that for a banner ad free application and an easier on the eye interface. I’m really looking forward to trying Twitter for Blackberry and I wonder how it’s going to perform.

As for my problems with TwitPic, I guess I shall stick to emailing for now :(

Here’s a table because I’m just anal like that :P

Latest update:

Well, I’ve just switched back to UberTwitter. I never noticed how much I Retweet till I use Seesmic. The traditional editable RT is replaced by a feature called Quote in Seesmic and basically it’s the same editable tweet but with “/via twittername” at the back of the tweet. First of all, the word “/via” alone uses up 4 characters on Twitter while “RT” uses only two. Also, it’s very annoying to have to go to the end of the content to delete “/via twittername” and then go back to the beginning to manually type “RT twittername:” so yeah, because of this, I’ve switched back to UberTwitter and have in fact paid the USD4.99 so that I can have the version with no ads.

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